(keitai-l) Re: Free voice calls - really?!?

From: Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net>
Date: 08/08/01
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0108081616570.862-100000@denkigama.nat.shibuya.blink.co.jp>
On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Marc Printz wrote:

> ...why telcos should
> give away a service [voice] for free that is still and will ever be
> the main interest/value for people carrying keitai.

Are you sure about this? Certainly my main interest is data; I use my
keitai much more for e-mail than for voice. I wouldn't be surprised if
this was true for some nihonjin as well.

> The other issue is that
> voice calls will then be usable for free low-bandwidth data,
> too (similar to covert channel), so there'll be interesting
> new business models exploiting this?

I doubt it. First you'd have to build something capable of modulating a
data signal over that voice channel, and it's not likely the phone
manufacturers are going to do this! And I doubt even a Telebit
Trailblazer could get more than a few hundred bps over that crappy
Docomo voice channel.  When you've got cheap hundred-kilobit access,
free hundred-bit access doesn't really look all that great, does it?

Still, given that bandwith being used for voice is bandwith you could
otherwise use for data, I can't see why they'd make voice free. If voice
usage goes down, it just gives them more data capacity to sell.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net>  +81 3 5778 0123   de gustibus, aut bene aut nihil
	    "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
			    -- G. Fitch


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Received on Wed Aug 8 10:13:19 2001